a study of the United States. A few details will, therefore,
be permitted me.

Among the Yankees, the faults are on the surface. I am not one to
justify Lynch law, whatever may be the necessities which exist in the
Far West. Riots in the United States are cited which have performed
their work of fire and devastation, and which no one has dared treat
rigorously afterwards, for fear of incurring disgrace from the sovereign
people; but I remember, I fancy, that similar things have been seen in
Paris itself. We will not, therefore, lay too great stress on them.

One thing that is not seen in Paris, is, unhappily, remarked in America:
the general tendency among women to substitute masculine qualities which
scarcely befit them, for the feminine qualities which constitute their
grace, their strength, and their dignity; thence results a certain
something unpleasant and rude which does no credit to the New World. I
by no means admire coarseness, and I do not admit that it is the
necessary companion of energy; the tone of the journals and of the
debates in Congress is often calculated to excite a just reprobation.
There is in the United States a levelling spirit, a jealousy of acquired
superiority, and, above all, of inherited distinctions, which proceeds
from the worst sentiments of the heart. What is graver still, the
tender and gentle side of the human soul, such as shines forth in the
Gospel, appears too rarely among this people, where the Gospel,
notwithstanding, is in honor, but where the labor of a gigantic growth
has developed the active instead of the loving virtues; the Americans
are cold even when good, charitable and devout.

They may love money, and often concentrate their thoughts on the means
of making it; I will not contest this, although I doubt, on seeing what
passes among ourselves, whether we have the right to cast the stone at
them; especially as American liberality, as I shall presently show, is
of a nature to put our parsimony to shame. As to the bankrupt acts, of
which American creditors have many times complained, nothing can justify
them; yet here again the role of pedagogue scarcely becomes us. If more
than one American railroad company have taken advantage of a crisis to
declare without much dishonor, a suspension of payment, it is not proved
that these suspensions of payment must be converted into bankruptcy. If
more than one town or more than one county make the half yearly payments
of their debts